Make in India @ 12: From Slogan to Manufacturing Power
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Twelve years ago, on September 25, 2014, Narendra Modi launched Make in India with an ambitious proposition: India should not remain merely a vast consumer market for goods manufactured elsewhere. It should become a country that makes, designs, innovates and exports.
The most striking transformation has been in electronics.In 2014-15, India's electronics production was around ₹1.9 lakh crore. By 2025-26, it had reached approximately ₹13.11 lakh crore nearly seven times the earlier level. Mobile-phone production increased from about ₹18,000 crore to ₹6.27 lakh crore, roughly a 33-fold increase. India is now the world's second-largest mobile-phone manufacturer by volume.
The change is even more dramatic in trade. In 2014-15, about 75 per cent of India's mobile-phone demand was met through imports. By 2024-25, the corresponding figure had fallen to just 0.02 per cent, according to the government. Mobile-phone exports increased from roughly ₹1,500 crore in 2014-15 to around ₹2 lakh crore in 2024-25. Smartphones emerged as India's top exported commodity in calendar year 2025.
In 2014, India had only two mobile-phone manufacturing units. Today, there are more than 300. The country is no longer simply importing finished electronic products for its enormous domestic market; it is increasingly participating in global production and export networks.That is the real significance of Make in India: India has begun moving from being primarily a market for global manufacturers to becoming part of the manufacturing geography of the world.
But production numbers alone do not determine whether India has built genuine manufacturing strength. A factory needs suppliers, component manufacturers, logistics, skilled workers, testing facilities, capital equipment and technological capabilities. The deeper question is how much of that value chain is located in India.
India's electronics industry illustrates both the progress and the challenge. Domestic value addition is currently estimated at around 18-20 per cent. The policy focus is consequently moving towards components, sub-assemblies, materials, capital equipment, design and technology rather than final assembly alone.Assembly creates employment and exports. Technological capability creates durable economic power.
A country that assembles sophisticated products but imports most of their components remains vulnerable to disruptions in global supply chains. A country that develops the components, machinery, intellectual property, design capabilities and skilled manpower behind those products acquires far greater economic and strategic autonomy. That explains the growing emphasis on semiconductors, rare-earth magnets, industrial parks and advanced materials. The government has allocated ₹1.275 lakh crore for Semicon 2.0 and ₹7,280 crore for integrated manufacturing of sintered rare-earth permanent magnets. It has also approved ₹33,660 crore for 100 investment-ready industrial parks under the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana.
The geopolitical timing is significant. Global supply chains are being reorganised around resilience and diversification. Companies are looking beyond excessive concentration in a handful of manufacturing centres. India's large domestic market, improving infrastructure, expanding digital ecosystem, skilled workforce and growing international partnerships give it an opportunity to capture a larger share of this reorganisation.
It must be to make products that the world wants to buy. That is the difference between Atmanirbharta as import substitution and Atmanirbharta as global competitiveness. There is also a critical employment dimension. India needs millions of productive, reasonably well-paid jobs for a young population. Services will remain indispensable, but they cannot absorb every category of worker entering the labour market. Manufacturing, particularly labour-intensive manufacturing, can connect economic growth with mass employment on a scale that high-end services cannot always provide.
For that reason, Make in India should ultimately be judged not merely by factories, investment figures or export numbers, but by whether manufacturing becomes a broad-based engine of employment, entrepreneurship and upward mobility. Twelve years ago, Make in India was a declaration of intent. Today, the manufacturing landscape is demonstrably different, with electronics providing perhaps the clearest evidence of what sustained policy intervention, investment and market scale can achieve.The unfinished task, however, is considerably harder.
India must move from assembly to components, from components to technology, from technology to innovation and from innovation to globally competitive Indian brands.Make in India at twelve is therefore best understood not as a finished success story, but as an industrial transformation still in progress from making India a manufacturing destination to making India a manufacturing power. The decisive test of the next decade will be simple: whether India merely manufactures more or whether it makes more of what it manufactures, owns more of the technology behind it and sells more of it to the world.
At its core, Make in India is not merely an economic programme but an expression of an older ideological idea within the BJP the emphasis on Swa, or India's own strength and self-reliance. Narendra Modi's later call for Atmanirbhar Bharat draws from the same principle. Make in India is its logical economic extension: transforming the idea of self-reliance into manufacturing capability, technological capacity and the confidence to compete with the world on India's own strength.
The proposition addressed a structural weakness in the Indian economy. India had built considerable strength in services, information technology and consumption, but manufacturing had never acquired the scale and strategic importance required to transform employment, exports and India's global economic position.
Twelve years later, the impact is visible across electronics, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, defence, steel, railways and emerging technologies. The government's latest assessment says manufacturing GVA at constant prices recorded a compound annual growth rate of 10.88 per cent between 2022-23 and 2025-26, while manufacturing output in the Index of Industrial Production grew 7 per cent during April-July 2026 over the corresponding period.
The change is even more dramatic in trade. In 2014-15, about 75 per cent of India's mobile-phone demand was met through imports. By 2024-25, the corresponding figure had fallen to just 0.02 per cent, according to the government. Mobile-phone exports increased from roughly ₹1,500 crore in 2014-15 to around ₹2 lakh crore in 2024-25. Smartphones emerged as India's top exported commodity in calendar year 2025.
In 2014, India had only two mobile-phone manufacturing units. Today, there are more than 300. The country is no longer simply importing finished electronic products for its enormous domestic market; it is increasingly participating in global production and export networks.That is the real significance of Make in India: India has begun moving from being primarily a market for global manufacturers to becoming part of the manufacturing geography of the world.
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The Production Linked Incentive scheme gave this strategy another dimension. Introduced in 2020, PLI moved government support towards measurable production, investment and export outcomes across 14 sectors. By March 2026, the schemes had attracted more than ₹2.40 lakh crore in investment, generated more than ₹22.66 lakh crore in production and sales, supported exports exceeding ₹15.2 lakh crore and generated more than 14 lakh direct and indirect jobs, according to government data.
India's electronics industry illustrates both the progress and the challenge. Domestic value addition is currently estimated at around 18-20 per cent. The policy focus is consequently moving towards components, sub-assemblies, materials, capital equipment, design and technology rather than final assembly alone.Assembly creates employment and exports. Technological capability creates durable economic power.
A country that assembles sophisticated products but imports most of their components remains vulnerable to disruptions in global supply chains. A country that develops the components, machinery, intellectual property, design capabilities and skilled manpower behind those products acquires far greater economic and strategic autonomy. That explains the growing emphasis on semiconductors, rare-earth magnets, industrial parks and advanced materials. The government has allocated ₹1.275 lakh crore for Semicon 2.0 and ₹7,280 crore for integrated manufacturing of sintered rare-earth permanent magnets. It has also approved ₹33,660 crore for 100 investment-ready industrial parks under the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana.
The geopolitical timing is significant. Global supply chains are being reorganised around resilience and diversification. Companies are looking beyond excessive concentration in a handful of manufacturing centres. India's large domestic market, improving infrastructure, expanding digital ecosystem, skilled workforce and growing international partnerships give it an opportunity to capture a larger share of this reorganisation.
But opportunity alone will not create a manufacturing powerhouse. India must raise manufacturing's contribution to the economy, deepen domestic value addition, improve labour productivity, reduce logistics costs, strengthen MSMEs, expand industrial R&D and create a much larger pool of technically skilled workers. Indian companies also need to move beyond contract manufacturing towards design, intellectual property and globally recognised brands. The objective cannot simply be to replace imports.
It must be to make products that the world wants to buy. That is the difference between Atmanirbharta as import substitution and Atmanirbharta as global competitiveness. There is also a critical employment dimension. India needs millions of productive, reasonably well-paid jobs for a young population. Services will remain indispensable, but they cannot absorb every category of worker entering the labour market. Manufacturing, particularly labour-intensive manufacturing, can connect economic growth with mass employment on a scale that high-end services cannot always provide.
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India must move from assembly to components, from components to technology, from technology to innovation and from innovation to globally competitive Indian brands.Make in India at twelve is therefore best understood not as a finished success story, but as an industrial transformation still in progress from making India a manufacturing destination to making India a manufacturing power. The decisive test of the next decade will be simple: whether India merely manufactures more or whether it makes more of what it manufactures, owns more of the technology behind it and sells more of it to the world.
At its core, Make in India is not merely an economic programme but an expression of an older ideological idea within the BJP the emphasis on Swa, or India's own strength and self-reliance. Narendra Modi's later call for Atmanirbhar Bharat draws from the same principle. Make in India is its logical economic extension: transforming the idea of self-reliance into manufacturing capability, technological capacity and the confidence to compete with the world on India's own strength.